hmmmm... as someone just now getting into guild wars, this is a mixed bag. I really want to explore all the professions, and I've already used the four original slots (2 from the Factions beta weekend), so I'm looking forward to Factions additional 2 slots. But buying more slots for $10. I dunno. I think 6 is enough, or an additional 2 per expansion. I am loathe to reward people for spending money. I'd rather it be that you could unlock another slot if you completed some difficult mission or vanquished a higher ranked guild.

-p-

This is almost as petty as the Oblivion pay-mods. Did someone dedicate 2006 as "Nickel & Dime Year" when I wasn't looking?

Wow... $9.99 for an extra character slot? And I thought people bitched about the extra dollar you had to spend for a second FFXI character.

One slot for $10? Is that $10 a month or $10 flat? If the former, it seems kinda high.

Flat fee, I'd assume, since Guild Wars has no monthly subscription..

How is GW, I think i might buy GW:F (Any idea how long it takes to hit the lvl 20 lvl cap to get going on pvp?)

Guild Wars isn't the first MMO to charge for more characters. FFXI charges US$12.95 for 1 character, and an extra $1 per extra character, up to a maximum of 10 per account.

$10 does sound steep but as #5 pointed out, it's not that bad if it's flat rate. I'm probably up to $7-8 dollars for my one mule, and I know people with 3-4 extra characters (and dollars) per month.

I can't believe I put "vanquished." What a tool I am.

My guess is a one time $10 fee per slot. I too think it's high as buying two slots is $20, half the cost of the retail box. I guess it could be argued that a retail box, either of the original or Factions gives you four slots, so $40/4 = $10 per slot, but I see it more as $36 for game content, $1 per opportunity to explore it.

As for "how is GW?" well, it's like party-otiented diablo II. You run around doing quests and missions, where you kill a bunch of things, and the emphasis is not on leveling, but on unlocking skills. You can equip only 8 skills at one time, so you try to "build" a character for a task, ideally so the skills complement each other. For example, you might have one enchantment that for every 1 point of cold damage the opponent takes, he takes an additional 1 point of cold damage. Then you have a skill that causes cold damage. So you enchant him, then hit him with cold damage so he takes double damage. It's simple like that, but where it gets interesting is if you have a friend that's a tank and uses a cold damage dealing sword. then the guy is getting tripple cold damage.

I look at it like this: if you like deck-building games like Magic the Gathering where individual pieces can be combined and recombined in new ways to do new things, GW is a fun game. It's much more a game of teamwork and skill than level.

And there's no monthly fee.

Hope this helps.

-p-

If the game had a montly fee, Id say it was a rip, but seeing as how guild wars runs only from what they make from selling teh games, Id say its. a fair price.

also consider teh fact that ALOT of people have bought a second copy of the game just to have more characters. at least this way you wave money, and all your characters are on one acount

Guild Wars......
You know, I was for some reason holding off on this game. I'm not quite sure why. I guess I was waiting for the price to come down a bit just in case I didn't like it. I found it for $39.99CAD so I decided to get it.
Let me tell you first hand. I have had this game for little over a week now and IT'S KILLING ME!!!!
It has kept me up every single night until 5 or 6 AM. My wife has threatened to burn the game and my PC. I didn't think it was humanly possible to survive on 3 hours a night sleep for a few days let alone a week.
I got to work thinking about this game, at lunch I'm thinking about this game, I'm driving home thinking about this game, even at the movie theater (Took the Kids to see "The Wild")I'm thinking about this game. If you like Diablo, Oblivion, or any type of typical RPG, you will love this game. WARNING!! It may just make you a "bit" obsessive.
I will be getting Factions as soon as it's out.

well... factions will have 6 slots (and its a standalone expansion with all the old content) so drop the $50 for the game get 6 slots or $8.34 per slot plus free new content (hehe) seems like the better deal as opposed to $10 per slot plus then you can party with yourself lol

PiratePete, I'm in the same boat. I can't stop thinking about this game and possible skill combos or what professions would work best together. I have exams coming up and I need to forget this game exists since in the last three days I've logged about 7 hours in-game and 0 hours in-book. Bad.

-p-

Well thing is you only need to buy 2 slots after you get both games, and then you will have enough for all classes, and seeing as how all future expansions will eitehr give more slots with new classes, or no slots and no new classes. I think its a fair deal, cause then youll be set.

If your in a very active guild, its very nice to have 1 of each class, that way you always are able to switch when needed. and it isnt hard to maintain that many characters.

but like mentiond this is mainly for the people that play more, people that play the game casually, are good with just 6 charcters

I went on a shopping spree for games for the PC and 360, buying a total of 7 games. The 7th game I bought, just to see what all the fuss was about, was Guild Wars. I've barely played any of the other games which includes Elder Scrolls, GRAW and FEAR.

Guild Wars owns my soul now, I think. Or, I'm willing to sell my soul for some really good skills. I need the skill capture thingy!

Soon it should come to a point where online based Games are distributed for free but when you get hooked on it you are charged a small fee for extra features.

well... factions will have 6 slots (and its a standalone expansion with all the old content)

devi8i: Not quite correct. Factions does not have "all the old content". What Factions has that the Prophecies campaign (the original)has is all 6 of the original Professions. There will be some Skills that are unique to the original campaign, and some that are unique to Factions. The advantage for people who choose to merge their accounts is access to both sets of Skills for all their characters.

M M: It doesn't take too long at all to hit Level 20 if you are doing as many quests as possible. You can probably hit Level 20 by playing consistently for a couple of weeks or so.

For those who see this development for GW as imminent 'nickel&diming' of the horse-armor variety from Anet, please understand that this debate raged for months on the GW forums. The players were upset that we wouldn't get enought slots to create one of each primary profession with the release of Factions (the total is 8 profs, with 6 slots for those linking the 2 games, which is simply too good to refuse). It was these SAME PLAYERS who suggested the idea to pay for additional char slots. It doesn't add 'content,' it is simply a way to keep all of us hard-core GW fans (I've been obsessed for a whole year!) happy with more replayability and variety.

Brinstar, youre wrong about the couple of weeks thing; you can hit the level cap in a weekend :P specially in factions because the first few quests give you a bucket load of exp!

and to expand slightly, there are 3 sets of skills in the game so far: core skills, prophecies skills, factions skills. when you buy guildwars, you get core and prophecies. when you buy factions, you get core and factions. you can add both games to your account so you get core and prophecies and factions.

when you kill people and win matches in pvp, you get faction points with balthazar. take these points to a priest of balthazar to unlock things on your account and they will be available options when you create a new pvp character. these are not immediately available for use on the current character though, so its only really useful to unlock weapon upgrades and runes unless you want to try a really weird skill combination and dont have any skill points on your rpg characters.

and about the character slot thing: there are now 8 professions in guildwars (both chapters combined) and each character has a primary and secondary profession. when you gain a new skill for any rpg character on your acount, it becomes unlocked. so to unlock every skill in the game as fast as possible, you can have 4 characters with all of the 8 professions (no overlapping professions) and then you have 1 extra rpg slot for overlapping professions and 1 pvp slot that you can delete and remake as many times as you want (and its max lvl with any skills/weapons/runes you have previously unlocked)

theres really no need for extra char slots unless youre a roleplay weirdo, in which case you should be playing an mmorpg, not guildwars